Asiatic Quarterly Review (Full Title: The Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, and Oriental and Colonial Record): Volume XIII, No. 26 [‎513r] (150/238)

Siam s Intercourse with China.
3^3
of crockery manufacture, when a populous Siamo-Chinese village most
undoubtedly thrived round about the famed kilns. Local tradition pre
tends that the craft which frequented this spot were sea-going junks,
bringing up merchandise from abroad and taking away the prized products
of the kilns to the neighbouring foreign nations, as the name tap l hau,
usually designating a junk for sea-navigation, implies.* This tale, how
ever, must be accepted with reserve, for although we have admitted and
demonstrated that sea-going craft used in the old days to proceed up the
river as far as Sukhothai, and even, perhaps, Swankhalok, it is scarcely
credible that they could, even at high-water season, ascend the rapids
existing abreast of the latter-named city. This feat is now performed only
by river-boats of shallow draft, and has become easier of accomplishment
during the last sixty years or so ; before that the rapids appear to have
been far more difficult to cross.! Nevertheless, it seems pretty well certain
that a large proportion of the Swankhalok wares were taken down-country
in boats, and some of them exported thence to the southern coast of Indo-
China, or carried overland across the watersheds.
The Martabani.
Here the much-debated question as to the original place of manufacture
of the Martabani vases once more comes to the front, as brisk and intricate
as ever it was. So much has been written about it, mostly by “ arm-chair ”
Oriental scholars of our Western world, that we cannot afford to pass it un
noticed, as it directly bears upon the subject now under discussion. After
due perusal of the principal arguments! brought forward by either of the
parties engaged in the controversy as to the origin of the Martabaju
celadon dishes, tending on the one side to claim them as having been
manufactured in China, and thence exported by the early traders to the
Indian or Arabian countries, where they became so celebrated, and on
the other to prove that they must been made at some place in Indo-
China not far away from Martaban, whence they got their name. I am,
on the whole, strongly inclined to side with Professor Karabacek, of
Vienna, who has been the propounder and chief upholder of the latter
view. The passage he quotes from the celebrated encyclopaedist Haji
Khalfa, who died in a.d. 1658, to the effect that “the precious, magnifi-
* Tap'hau, often spelled Samp'hau, seems to be a comparatively modern Siamese
•term derived from the Chinese word [po, p'o, boh, etc.), denoting an ocean-going junk.
Ta and Sam are prefixes, the latter standing very likely for {ch'wan, sting, shon, etc.),
the Chinese generic name for a boat, ship, etc.
t Rafts of teak-timber do, of course, shoot the rapids during the high-water season,
having to stop from about October to July each year, when the rapids become impassable.
The rapids termed King Luang, situated abreast of the old palace, are the most difficult
to cross ; a half-mile further below there are the rapids named King Sdh. The former
are constituted by a quartz reef forming a barrier running across the river, and causing
its waters to fall for about 9 f ee b
X Chiefly as summed up in an able article on “ Ancient Porcelain, published by
Dr. Hirth in the Journal, China Branch Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xxii. ( 1887 ), p. J5 0
et seq., on which my criticisms had to be based, not having access in this far-away land
to the original publications of the parties concerned in the controversy.